Huckabee: ‘Sin and evil’ caused Oregon shooting

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says that “sin and evil” are to blame for the recent mass shooting in Oregon, not access to guns.

“You know, we have not so much a gun control problem as we do have a problem with sin and evil,” Huckabee told host Alisyn Camerota on CNN’s “New Day” on Monday.

{mosads}“I think we always talk about what the weapon was, but whether it’s a pressure cooker or whether it’s a gun, we’re dealing with people who are either deranged or they’re very focused, because they want to kill people in the name of terrorism,” the GOP presidential candidate added.

“This is a matter of evil,” he said. “This is an evil thing, when people kill another person. It happens way too often.”

Huckabee’s remarks follow a mass shooting in Oregon last week that killed 10 people, including the alleged gunman.

Chris Harper Mercer, 26, is accused of opening fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., on Oct. 1.

Huckabee argued on Monday that the media stokes fears about mass shootings by making them sound more common than they are.

“Well, the fact is, sending your kids to school today is much safer than sending my kids to school 30 years ago when they went,” he said. “It’s a safer place.

“I know it doesn’t sound like it because we have 24-hour cable news that gives us the reports non-stop of the crimes,” Huckabee continued. “A gun crime gets most of the attention.

“It’s not that our kids are just absolutely vulnerable every day they go to school,” the former Arkansas governor added. “That’s simply statistically not true.”

Huckabee also charged that imposing stricter gun regulations won’t prevent future bloodshed in the nation’s schools.

“There are things that happen, some which we can prevent and some we can’t,” he said.

“For example, we could stop most of the car wrecks if we restricted speeds to 25 miles per hour,” Huckabee said.

“But as a society, we would never accept that,” he added. “So, sometimes we have to decide what risks are we willing to take?”